NEWARK, N.J. — The woman hired to clean up Rutgers’ scandal-scarred athletic program quit as Tennessee’s women’s volleyball coach 16 years ago after her players submitted a letter complaining she ruled through humiliation, fear and emotional abuse, The Star-Ledger reported Saturday night on its website.
“The mental cruelty that we as a team have suffered is unbearable,” the players wrote about Julie Hermann, hired May 15 as Rutgers’ athletic director after serving as the No. 2 athletic administrator at Louisville.
In the letter submitted by all 15 team members, the players said Hermann called them “whores, alcoholics and learning disabled” and they wrote: “It has been unanimously decided that this is an irreconcilable issue.” The players told The Star-Ledger that Hermann absorbed the words and said: “I choose not to coach you guys.”
The 49-year-old Hermann, set to take over the Rutgers’ program June 17, told The Star-Ledger she didn’t remember the letter. The newspaper said when it was read to her by phone Wednesday, she replied, “Wow.”
Hermann, the first woman to head Rutgers’ athletic program and one of three female ADs at the 124 schools that make up college football’s top tier, has promised a restart for the program following the ouster of its men’s basketball coach and the resignation of other officials.
She is set to replace Tim Pernetti, who quit last month after the firing of basketball coach Mike Rice. Practice videos surfaced of Rice shoving and throwing basketballs at players and yelling gay slurs at them.
“No one on the coaching staff doesn’t believe that we need to be an open book, that we will no longer have any practice, anywhere at any time, that anybody couldn’t walk into and be pleased about what’s going on in that environment. It is a new day. It is already fixed,” Hermann said at her introductory news conference.
At that news conference, Hermann was questioned about a 1997 jury verdict that awarded $150,000 to a former Tennessee assistant coach who said Hermann fired her because she became pregnant.
Rutgers’ problems started in December when Rice was suspended three games and fined $75,000 by the school after a video of his conduct at practices was given to Pernetti by Eric Murdock, a former assistant coach. The video showed numerous clips of Rice firing basketballs at players, hitting them in the back, legs, feet and shoulders. It also showed him grabbing players by their jerseys and yanking them around the court. Rice can also be heard yelling obscenities and using anti-gay slurs.
